Airlines cancel nearly 2,300 flights

Monday, March 3, 2014

NEW YORK (AP) — Airlines canceled nearly 2,300 flights Monday as the latest winter storm hit the U.S. East Coast.

The hardest hit cities were Washington D.C., Philadelphia, New York and Baltimore. All flights into and out of Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport have been halted.

On Sunday, airlines scrapped nearly 2,000 flights in Dallas, Chicago and Houston, according to flight tracking site FlightAware.com. There are more than 30,000 flights in the United States on a typical day.

It's been a daunting winter for air travelers. Airlines have canceled more than 87,000 domestic flights since Dec. 1, a record number.

Carriers are now much more likely to cancel flights at the first sign of bad weather. For instance, more than 550 flights to and from New York were canceled Monday, even though the city only got a light dusting of snow. Original forecasts had called for much higher snow totals.

Passengers on New York-based JetBlue were among the hardest hit, with the airline scrapping 23 percent of its flights, according to FlightAware. The overwhelming majority of JetBlue flights leave from Boston, New York or Washington D.C. making the airline especially prone to cancellations when a storm hits the Northeast. US Airways and the regional airlines it contracts with along the East Coast also had a high percent of cancellations.